What boardgames did you just play?

Navegador - Another rondel worker placement. You're a Portuguese trader racing other traders around the world to collect the most colonies and treasure. Once you purchase colonies and build factories, you can then sell and process goods on the market, which can either suck it dry or flood everything. The game ends once a ship reaches Nagasaki. We took our time picking through all the colonies, which inflated our scores quite a bit. One is probably supposed to scramble across the map so that they can end the game while their score is hot. I didn't mind; I had over 20,000 gold!
 
No way. This thread is a year old?

In The Year Of The Dragon - What's this? A Stefan Feld game that doesn't vomit points all over your lap? Madness! Instead you get a deadly calendar of upcoming events like a barbarian invasion, a plague, a drought, a fireworks festival...delightful, yes. It's like Feld decided to boil the typical Euro design down into a Sophie's Choice of "do I sacrifice someone in my palace to get this temporary power-up". A bit like Agricola's agonizing decision-making, without the Incomplete Farm of Judgment.

King of Tokyo - I could play this one all day. It's so light and fluffy and it lets you roll big ol' chunky dice. My giant rabbit almost won when a co-player rolled several hits against me. A solid push-your-luck to fill in time between larger games.

Yedo (again) - You know, this is about as generic as it gets for worker placements, but that's okay. It does its job very well. There's just enough interesting stuff going on that you actually care about what your friends are doing. And the oversized mission cards are just fun to look at and hold. It's perhaps a bit too long for its content with endgame being about a dozen rounds.
 
Oddly enough, my last post still applies. Although tonight I'm probably going to get some St. Petersburg or Paris Connection in out of what I play, and maybe someone else will have a new one.
 
Chukchi Husky said:
Maybe this will be the best place to ask. Are there any board games that are similar to Risk but have more to it?
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Note: I haven't played any of these but I'm a SU&SD zealot who looks for excuses to link to them.

Kemet looks awesome--it supposedly solves the turtling problem that Risk tends to fall into.

1812 is a team game with seemingly interesting design choices.

And City of Remnants packs a ton of theme and crunchy goodness into one package.

If you're feeling particularly abstract, Tigris & Euphrates goes for Risk's throat. I've played this one and it's just fantastic.

And there's a sizable fanbase for Fantasy Flight's Game of Thrones, which is very Risk-like but also has a bit of backstabbing. On that same note, Warrior Knights has a decent amount of historical content while still being easy enough to understand (said the guy who hasn't played it yet canyoutellIwanttobuythis).

Titan is also popular with a few CFC-ers around here. It sports a zany usage of Greek mythology.

This will sound silly after I list too many choices, but...other people will definitely have better ideas than me. The boardgame hobby is incredibly expansive for choice.
 
I now own Z-Man's Carcassone with the first two expansions, but my flatmate doesn't want to play with me. :(

I also own Lords of Water & Scoundrels of Skullport (our instant favourite) and Castles of Burgundy, but there are so many flipping tiles for Castles... that it takes forever to set up. :(
 
Chukchi Husky said:
Maybe this will be the best place to ask. Are there any board games that are similar to Risk but have more to it?
Click to expand...

Are you looking for any specific game mechanics? Like, Risk plus a few extras, or combat based on dice, or some kind of conquest and map control but maybe without dice?

CivCube said:
And there's a sizable fanbase for Fantasy Flight's Game of Thrones, which is very Risk-like but also has a bit of backstabbing. On that same note, Warrior Knights has a decent amount of historical content while still being easy enough to understand (said the guy who hasn't played it yet canyoutellIwanttobuythis).
Click to expand...

The GoT boardgame can be better compared to Diplomacy, I think, with some additional random elements and sliders. Not sure if that helps or not.
 
Antilogic said:
Are you looking for any specific game mechanics? Like, Risk plus a few extras, or combat based on dice, or some kind of conquest and map control but maybe without dice?
Click to expand...

I don't know. I just kept being told that Risk has the most strategic depth out of any game, while I thought it was just based entirely on dice rolls and cards.
 
Just play Funkenschlag (aka. Power Grid) for the first time.
3 player session, was quite some fun (especially blocking the other players off :D). I guess it would have been even more tense with 4 players, due to less available ressources.
 
I brought archipelago the other day. It seems quite fun in the 2 short games I've played. The exploration mechanic is quite nice in that you can fail, but the rewards can be quit high. The only real downside is the rule book is rubbish and I spent ages on the geek to clarify some points (some of which are still murky).
 
Chukchi Husky said:
I just kept being told that Risk has the most strategic depth out of any game, while I thought it was just based entirely on dice rolls and cards.
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Well, of course. Your idiot friends play Risk, don't they?
 
Chukchi Husky said:
I don't know. I just kept being told that Risk has the most strategic depth out of any game, while I thought it was just based entirely on dice rolls and cards.
Click to expand...

I think your suspicious are well-placed. :lol:

As far as wargames go, Diplomacy is a classic strategic wargame, Axis and Allies is massive and still has some degree of randomness, but it's a pretty solid from a strategy perspective. My favorites (Friedrich and Maria) both use decks of modified playing cards for combat, but are still more involved than Risk because you have a limited resource (the cards in your hand) that have to be divided between reinforcement, politics, and fighting battles. Twilight Struggle is very highly rated, although I haven't been able to try it yet. And that's not to mention tons of more formal wargames like Bonaparte at Marengo, etc. Not too familiar with those, but I want to try them.

If you are looking for games with more strategic depth than Risk (although not necessarily wargames), then GAGA's suggestion of Power Grid is perfect, as is Factory Manager and Puerto Rico. The Ticket to Ride series and St. Petersburg are a bit lighter than those, but are still great fun.
 
Smallworld
Just with two people (third roommate just made it to Panderia in WoW so he's lost to us for a little while >.>) but it was fun and easy to learn. I only lost by a handful of points :D

On the subject of Risk, I saw a copy of Mass Effect Risk today. Its as bad as monopoly (also found a copy of monopoly based on the area here... it looks rather bad).
 
Arakhor said:
Well, of course. Your idiot friends play Risk, don't they?
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Yes. I tried to get them into Carcassonne and some other games but that keep going to Risk as it has the most depth. Another game they played was Settlers of Catan, but they say Risk is better. They even say it has more depth than Dungeons & Dragons.

Antilogic said:
I think your suspicious are well-placed. :lol:

As far as wargames go, Diplomacy is a classic strategic wargame, Axis and Allies is massive and still has some degree of randomness, but it's a pretty solid from a strategy perspective.
Click to expand...

Diplomacy was the cheapest board game I saw on sale that looked similar, and there was a stripped down version of Axis & Allies that I saw that cost half the price of the other versions. Those were the two that I looked at before.
 
Chukchi Husky said:
They even say it has more depth than Dungeons & Dragons.
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Of course they did. We can almost rely on 'them' to say the most outrageous or ridiculous things.
 
Chukchi Husky said:
Diplomacy was the cheapest board game I saw on sale that looked similar, and there was a stripped down version of Axis & Allies that I saw that cost half the price of the other versions. Those were the two that I looked at before.
Click to expand...

If your gaming group is set on wargames, seriously give Friedrich or Maria a try. In both games, the players have either one or a couple countries they play as, and receive a number of cards (tactical cards, or TCs) per turn. These cards are used to buy reinforcements, replace supply trains, affect politics, and in battles on the board (i.e. if you are in a spades region, then you use your spades for battle). Oh, and you have to maneuver stacks of troops between cities, set up encirclements, and either conquer or defend key objective cities.

Maniacal said:
Smallworld
Just with two people (third roommate just made it to Panderia in WoW so he's lost to us for a little while >.>) but it was fun and easy to learn. I only lost by a handful of points :D
Click to expand...

I've only played Smallworld twice but I love it.
 
That's a shame, we have English versions over here in the States.

Oh well, keep an eye out for them. I think they are excellent games, although not as broadly known because they are published by a small developer.
 
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